Every year, I share my summer reading list of books that has challenged my thinking and expanded my perspective. This summer, each book on this list circled the same idea: we are not preparing children merely for the next grade, the next school, or even the next milestone. We are preparing human beings for a world that needs thoughtful, courageous, compassionate people. 

“We are preparing human beings for a world that needs thoughtful, courageous, compassionate human beings.”

Agency: Helping Students See Their Power

Pierce Brown’s Red Rising and Eric Liu’s You’re More Powerful Than You Think both explore a truth we often underestimate: young people are not passive recipients of the world. They are active shapers of it.

Our role is not to solve every problem for them. It is to help them recognize their own capacity to influence their relationships, their community, and eventually the systems they inhabit. Agency is not a future skill; it is a present one.

Being Human in an Age of AI

Joy Buolamwini’s Unmasking AI reminded me that artificial intelligence is not simply a technological question. It is a human one. As machines grow more capable, the qualities that matter most are the ones that make us distinctly human: curiosity, empathy, discernment, creativity, relationships, and moral courage.

Our job as educators, then, isn’t to prepare children for a world without AI but rather to prepare them to be deeply human in a world with AI. This aligns directly with our mission to develop inter‑culturally adept, globally-minded learners who can navigate complexity with integrity.

Belonging: The Prerequisite for Learning

Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop’s The Disengaged Teen and Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality both point to a truth educators know deeply: students learn best when they feel known, valued, and connected. They demonstrate belonging is a prerequisite for learning.

A great school is not only excellent teachers and rigorous academics. It is a place where someone notices a hard day, where a child’s name is remembered, where a student believes they matter. Belonging is the soil in which agency, curiosity, and courage can grow. This is exactly what we strive to do each and every day at the International School of Denver.

Letting Students Discover Who They Are

Jeffrey Selingo’s Dream School and Fredrik Backman’s My Friends offered a powerful counterpoint to the achievement‑driven narratives that often surround education. Success is not the same as becoming the person we hope our students will be.

Our children don't need us to design their entire future; they need the relationships, experiences, confidence, and space to discover it.

We are not raising résumés. We are raising human beings.

What I Want for Our Students

When I think about all of this, agency, to humanity, belonging, and becoming, I think about our students. I want them:

• to know who they are
• to know they have a voice
• to disagree without losing connection
• to stay curious enough to keep learning
• to recognize bias, including their own
• to use technology without being used by it
• to have courage to enter rooms where they don’t yet have the answers
• and above all, to know they belong here

Because of a community that believes in the transformative power of bilingual, globally minded education, ISDenver is a place where students are safe to explore, encouraged to question, and inspired to grow.

It is an honor to be part of this journey. I’m grateful to contribute to a mission devoted to preparing compassionate and curious human beings for the world that needs them.